Category Archives: best practice

eco-friendly warehouses go carbon positive

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From the Guardian today

Warehouses aren’t normally associated with sustainability and environmentally friendliness; they are rather grey and anonymous looking. But a £50m scheme on a brownfield site at a former colliery in north Staffordshire is set to change this.

The project, called Blue Planet Chatterley Valley, is to be developed by Gazeley UK, which is owned by Asda Walmart, on 31 acres of former colliery land in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It will be a truly carbon positive development; the complex will have its own biofuel micro power station (using oilseed rape) and it will produce sufficient power and heat for the on-site buildings and a surplus which is enough energy for up to 650 local homes.

A new definition to savour here – ‘truly carbon positive‘ – brilliant

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best practice innovations and design schedule online

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The USGBC has published the LEEDS innovation and design credits schedule on line, giving all opportunity to view a listing of proven green building strategies that have been submitted and utilized by LEED Certified projects. (source) in design in construction technology and management and importantly in facilities management

Making a fascinating read with such innovations as:

Extend the useful life of an existing building and reduce construction waste by Moving an existing building from the site rather than demolish it in the course of this project

and

Conserve resources, and integrate the building and environment through Significantly reduce the use of raw materials and integrate site features with the natural environment. Avoid the fabrication, transportation and construction impacts by using locally recovered boulders; Use native raw materials to satisfy structural security requirements

and

Employee Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Analyze the CO2 emissions generated by employee automobile commuting: compare the actual employee/staff mileage traveled to a remodeled building on the existing site vs. several proposed sites for new construction. Convert mileage to CO2 emissions and Use the results to determine the final project location.

As described by the Building Design and Construction online site:

The LEED Rating System is the USGBC’s voluntary building certification program that defines high-performance green buildings, which are more environmentally responsible, healthier, and more profitable structures. LEED addresses a variety of buildings and building project types through individualized systems, including: new construction, existing buildings, commercial interiors, core & shell, homes and neighborhood development.

I need to check if the BREEAM scheme, ECO Homes and or Code assessments do or will publish similar schedules. If nothing else they make great reading and will spark innovative ideas.

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collaborative city design and prequal requirements …

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Worldchanging suggested in a recent post a collaborative institute with classes for every city (US) to

… offer education and examples about urban design fundamentals – what makes a public (space) work, what makes a street pedestrian-friendly, what makes a neighborhood livable – to those who are actually zoning, approving, building, and planning our cities … Not only would it breed better design, but since these classes would be collaborative, it could help to reduce the ‘silo’ mentality that is still pervasive in local governments.

The proposal also suggests that only the members of the ‘institutes’ and the ‘classes’ run are shortlisted to tender for city infrastructure or facilities work.

An excellent idea, but perhaps better approached by addressing hearts and minds so that we work collaboratively anyway by nature (rather than the opposite at the moment) . This needs the principles of integration to be a key part of built environment education.

The notion of making this a prequal issue is again excellent – understanding how a particular city, town or region works is essential in delivering requirements, and would move to a more local supply base for design, construction and fm. A benefit aligned to Community Based FM (CBfM) and the Transition Towns approaches. (raised on isite before)

An approach our (UK) local authorities and councils should consider perhaps. Add in the merton rule to the equation – ie understanding the local specific onsite renewable energy requirements and opportunites – and this could be a powerful way forward.

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coming soon … site waste management plans

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With under three months to go before SWMP become mandatory on projects over £250,000, I was amazed to read the results of a survey, conducted last year by NetRegs suggesting that the construction industry is sleep walking into the legislation with two thirds of respondents (66%) saying they didn’t know what an SWMP is and 63% were not aware that SWMPs could soon become a legal requirement.

SWMP are also a requirement of the Code for Sustainable Housing as a minimum requirement from Level One upwards.

At, fairsnape we have developed a basic and easy SWMP format that uses the project programme as the basis for addressing waste management thats goes a good way to meeting the legislation requirements … more

For more information Envirowise is running a series of events across the country and has much good advise on their website.

I note from the Envirowise documents that the typical cost of a skip is £1300 (when labour and materials are costed) and some 13% of materials deleivered to sites leave via the skips.  Ouch

Manage best in class innovation – free webcast

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Learning from and sharing with other sectors is important to overall improvement. Colleagues at the Benchmarking Institute have highlighted the following Managing Best in Class Innovation web cast scheduled for Jan 24th , hosted through the Automotive News, but the overview is important to all sectors, including the built environment:

Innovation is important for all businesses and especially vital for those in the manufacturing industry. Successful businesses do not just conceive ideas, they empower their people with the right technology and resources to develop, refine and convert those concepts into opportunities. Join Automotive News for a complimentary webinar presented by Microsoft. This discussion will expose how today’s innovators are:

# Leveraging social networking and enterprise search to enhance the innovation process

# Instilling structure and process to minimize the ad-hoc nature of innovation

# Leveraging rich collaboration and communication technologies to connect internal communities as well as external partners and customers

# Empowering people to contribute and discover new ideas

Register at Managing Best in Class Innovation web cast

no more greenbuild heros?

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The Guardian ran a list of the top  50 heros to save the planet on Saturday.  For an industry or sector that contributes to nearly 50% of the carbon emissions and 75% of energy use – it is really sad to see we have no real heros.

Of note though:

Aubrey Meyer: musician and activist. a 60-year-old South African violinist living in a flat in Willesden, north London,  Aubrey developed the Contraction and Convergence approach that is seriously challenging developing countries.

Oh and the RIBA sustainability strategy endorses C&C and recently made an award to Aubrey.

Meyer still plays the violin every day, but seldom with an orchestra. “I just did not realise that it would take quite so long to change the world,” he says.

Other mentions are Peter Head a director of Arup “master planner of the world’s first true eco city”  This you will recall won the Greenwash of 20067 award for the project that isnt. (very confusing )

and, Ken Yeang as the world’s leading green skyscraper architect and Lenardo Decaprio – for amongst others stuff  – building – Eco-Town,  a “model of green living”.

But to include Lomberg reduces the lists credibility – of the Great Warming Swindle school of thought, Lomberg is seen as a distorter of science and doing more harm than good to environmental causes

But where oh where are the green leaders and activists in our sector.  If you can think of anyone  you can join the debate  at The Guardian 

Best of green building

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The excellent Worldchanging site (changing your thinking) posted a review of the best of its green building articles recently – it makes for an interesting overview of emerging themes in green building albeit US based, many of which have been picked up through isite… Of note are

Digital House and the Future of Green Building

Green Building Simulation

The Slow Home Movement

Convergent Media and the DIY Home of the Future

Architecture 2030: An Interview with Ed Mazria

When you say that the building sector is responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions, though, do you mean that in a direct or an indirect sense? Because surely houses aren’t just sitting there emitting carbon dioxide all day – it’s the power plants that those houses are connected to.

Mazria: It’s direct.

Consolidation: cutting traffic and waste

The term ‘consolidation centre’ may not sound sexy, and little about the contemporary construction industry is. But in London a pilot program has found that managed consolidation of delivery operations can cut construction-related vehicle emissions by 70%, and cut waste by a huge percentage too. Pretty impressive? Even more so when you consider the simplicity of the idea.

The Greenest Building

Living Homes

Grow Your Own Treehouse and other thoughts on Ecological Architecture

framework award winners

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Hampshire county council picked up the Innovation and progress, finance and procurement award in this years Guardian Public Services Awards.   As reported in last the award supplement last wednesday, the council are gearing up the framework approach to cover £3bn of construction across all public services in Hampshire, with predicted savings of over £40m.

The framework pre-approves contractors regionally, claims to halve lead in times and reduce advertising and procurement costs and deals with the sustainability approach of encouraging the use of more local contractors.

Winner: Hampshire County Council on behalf of the South East Centre of Excellence (SECE)
On behalf of SECE, Hampshire County Council has pioneered a new approach to procuring and managing this work. The SECE Major Framework is about streamlining procurement processes and delivering improved performance and efficiencies. It is also about ambition, innovation, and collaboration.

“Anatomy of a disaster” to reopen

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I note that the Clissold Leisure Centre is to re-open next month .  It was described, when it closed in 2003, a year after it opened as a ‘landmark Millennium project’, as the wrong building in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The building became a case study in bad practice, in focusing on the building rather than the users needs, (on the 1, rather than the 5, or 200, if you follow the 1:5:200 concept), It has been used by many quality and technical managers across the country as a lessons learnt case study, and to reinforce the 1:5:200 thinking of relationships between design, construction, fm and (business) costs.

The project attracted a huge amount of industry,political and local – social – attention, including one of the early reports in the Guardian by Jonathan Clancy – Anatomy of Disaster:

Clissold leisure centre’s catalogue of problems is a frightening read. A local activist group, called Not the Clissold Leisure Centre, lists no fewer than 59 defects on its website. These include a “changing village”, which Orthodox Jews and Muslim women would be unable to use. The children’s changing areas, moreover, were located next to two-metre deep water. Shower drains have blocked. Dirty water from showers flowed into the pools. Tiles around these were slippery.

Yet these are relatively minor complaints compared with defects number 32, “roof leaking across whole centre”, 33, “roof sweating with condensation”, 34, “glass walls around pools retain fetid water”, 40, “inadequate ventilation to both pool areas”, 56, “significant cracking in squash-court walls” and, last and by no means least, 59, “water damage to sports-hall floor causing warping and lifting at less than 12 months, with injuries sustained by users.”

And, now ….

It reopens with a new toddler pool, improved disability access, reception area and new office space. Contractor Wates has installed a new roof, with a vapour control layer to prevent condensation, and new pool floors. The total cost of the centre, originally budgeted at £21 million, has risen to £45 million. bd online website

Ouch.

Construction carbon calculator – no more excuses…

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As mentioned before the topic with the highest hits and searches here on isite is a carbon calculator for the construction process.

I have been reviewing the calculator from the Environment Agency which come close, very close, to removing any excuses for not knowing the construction process carbon footprint, in setting a stake in the ground as a measure for improvement and in benchmarking across sites, companies and clients to drive real improvement.

In my opinion the positive points are:

  • written by a major client of the built environment for the built environment
  • not linked to carbon offset programmes (a big tick !)
  • based on spreadsheet (Excel) with visibility of data used in calculation.
  • appears easy to use with guidance, references and further reading
  • ‘open source’ in that the EA encourage its use by others
  • provides a great basis for carbon footprint benchmarking (watch this space!)
  • ability to add activities and materials to the base set up
  • deals with personal transport in a sensible and straightforward manner

The only (very) minor concern is the detail required to complete fully ( but then who said carbon diets were easy! and it would be good to see this tool as part of all site processes) and the materials element could be double counted – in the construction process footprint and the building footprint.

The EA will use the calculator on all of their projects from November

Read the Edie news link here